What are some of the themes of "Boy's Life," by Robert McCammon?

Boy's Life, by erstwhile horror
fiction author Robert McCammon, tells the story of one summer in the life of 12-year-old
Cory Mackenson, a resident of the fictitious town of Zephyr, Alabama. Zephyr is an
unspoiled place for Cory until one spring morning -  accompanying his father on his
milkrun - he witnesses a car carrying a murdered driver plunge into a local lake. The
realization that the murderer lives among them slowly wakens Cory to the evil lurking
behind the sunlit exterior of his hometown.  From The Lady, an ancient Afro-American
woman with the power of a seer, to a violent, racist family of backwoodsmen, Cory
confronts the secrets that hide in the shadows of his own hometown. His journey of
discovery - both of his own soul and of the reality in which he lives - yields three
themes in the novel. The first is bildungsroman or coming of age.
Cory stands at the threshold of adulthood where its psycho-social truths comingle with
the magic of childhood. How he succeeds in crossing that threshold drives the narrative
structure of Boy's Life.  The reader learns that Cory
was successful at it in the concluding chapter of the novel where the author reveals
that fiction and biography - 'fictography' is McCammon's word - have mixed and mingled
in Boy's Life.   The second is a theme identified by the author
himself: The revisiting of innocence, or the 'rediscovery of magic' as McCammon puts
it. In the same way as it is necessary for Cory to find the truth about the corpse at
the bottom of Saxon's Lake, so it is critically important for him (and for the reader)
to rediscover the healing wonders of childhood innocence. The third theme concerns the
frequent appearance of everyday wonders or instances of marvellous
realism in the pages of the novel. On the first day of summer vacation, Cory
and his buddies sprout angelic wings and soar into a blue sky of freedom; Cory defeats a
malevolent river monster, Old Moses, with a broomstick handle; and at a travelling carny
show, Cory and his friends help to free a real dinosaur from captivity. These and other
instances of marvellous realism serve to reconcile the realities of
an adult and rational life more and more claiming Cory's attention with the spiritual,
magical world of childhood.